“Manifestly it is better to use simple tools expertly than to possess a
bewildering assortment of complicated gadgets and either neglect or
use them incompetently”. (1947 Tom Rolt)

If you dont know who Tom Rolt was, you probably should…checkout this link Tom Rolt

Thanks to some handy notes here my task was made much easier. The steps I took were

A copy of the files and the script to install them are here jtztedongle but if you do download them you use them at your own risk.

The steps based on the information available here are shown below in the script I used.

#!/bin/bash
#see notes at http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=1017630
#should install required stuff to allow ZTE MF627 Broadband dongle as sold by
#3 in the UK to work on Ubuntu
#for later in the script I want todays date and time
the_date=`date +%y%m%d_%H%M%S`
#I downloaded usb mode switch
#from http://www.draisberghof.de/usb_modeswitch/usb-modeswitch_0.9.5_i386.deb
#1)install usb mode switch
dpkg -i usb-modeswitch_0.9.5_i386.deb
#2)
#first we’ll back up existing one
mv /etc/usb_modeswitch.conf /etc/usb_modeswitch.conf.jon.$the_date
cp usb_modeswitch.conf /etc/usb_modeswitch.conf
#3)Create udev ruls
cp 999-zte.rules /etc/udev/rules.d/999-zte.rules
#4)
cp 20-zte-mf628+.fdi /usr/share/hal/fdi/information/20thirdparty/20-zte-mf628+.fdi

To work round the policy kit weirdness there are some notes here which is where I finally got my solution

in short, login to a terminal

sudo -s

ck-launch-session users-admin

or if you want o admin services

ck-launch-session  services-admin

and volia the unlock button is no longer greyed out.

OK I know why we all rely on funding, funding is the river that defines the edges of our field of research and funders dont want to hear about failure.

We have a problem with failure, to finance project we need cash! and those that provide the money only seem to value projects that are successful.

Even projects that are successful have parts of the project that don’t work out and these are often swept under the carpet.

This is missing the point, in many cases we make greater advances by finding out what does not work. As to how we can convince the funders that failure is not bad is difficult and no I dont know what the solution is.

The subject is “Innovation Prevention Departments” (aka IPDs) In education especially we all seem to have one. They often work under assumed names that imply they provide a service, eg Information Services, Computing Services, Human Resources, Purchasing Dept etc. But the perception we, the end users have is that “they are run by ignorant and blinkered people”.

So what do IPDs do? Lets take some recent examples. A college that teaches photography and also bans access to flickr,� others who decide that second life access should be blocked. In short they decide without any consultation to block access to network based resources that they deem to be “bad”. We all know people who have had lectures, demonstrations or labs hampered or cancelled by an IPD dept.

No doubt you have your own examples and maybe its time we started to expose their stupidity and find ways of fighting back.

Remember the department that provides the Innovation Prevention function in your organisation is probably supposed to provide a SERVICE to their end users not make their end users work in a way that is convenient to the IPD.

Their arbitrary blocking of access to sites and resources is effectively censorship. When google did this for China there was widespread condemnation. You are being prevented from doing your research or utilising innovative tools for teaching progress by <insert your own description here >.

Not very far into the future it probably wont matter, many� students will have their own links to the internet via mobile broadband etc others may not so your IPD will be setting up a further digital divide.

Sadly this blinkered ignorance is not just within IT departments but also governments.The decision to block access to sites seems to be taken by people whose knowledge or imagination about the use of computers stopped at least 10 years ago.

Sadly many IPDs have staff that _can_ see the point, purpose and usefulness of the sites that their managers block access to.

Another insidious effect of the IPD is their insistence that everyone should use a standard setup or platform because that will be better..Errrr better WHY? and WHO FOR!!!!. On the one hand the world is talking about individual learning solutions and choice and on the other we have these morons insisting we should all use Windows/Exchange/Standard Desktops/Office/Have no rights to change, add, configure, install things.

Arghhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh

As network infrastructure technology improves it becomes easier to restrict how the network is used so things are going to get worse. I suspect however students will vote with their feet. If your institution has an IT dept run by management� determined to ban access to innovative services that the students want to use, then the students will go to an alternative institution.

rant over, I’ll get me coat……

Theres been some useful notes to help along the way at Danis Blog and the Ubuntu Forums.

The easy solution however was with the aid of this little application and a reboot all is well. to get to the betavine page you may have to fiddle about with certificates. Its the Vodaphone mobile connect driver I used the 1.99.17 version with Ubuntu Hardy running on a eeePC701

Something I have now done a few times when copying to a removeable device is to miss out a folder name  and copy to the /media/device_name folder  ie missed out the folder that is the actual devices partition…..result on two occasions has been no space left.

A full eeePC does not boot

btw

The notes for System Rescue CD have a couple of typos. Assuming you are building your stick from windows, the command  syslinux -ma E: is what you need. In one section -ma has been missed out